Marching through the South

 “They just don’t know how lost I feel without you. My teardrops never see the light of day.”

Dwight Yoakam singing, “Excuse me, I think I’ve got a heartache.”

Truth be told, I moved through the Deep South like Sherman through Atlanta. A good thing, too, since I was only a few steps ahead of a fierce storm that brought heavy rain, strong wind and more snow than some states in this part of the country had seen in five years.

A lucky find

Unaware of the impending weather, I made tracks after leaving Texas because my final destination was the South anyway, the Carolinas, where I’d stay for a good, long spell, and would have plenty to see and tell about once there. Besides, the Lovely Leigh (LeeLee, as the grandkids call her) was waiting in Winston-Salem, where we’d spend a few days with her family before going on to South Carolina. The kids and their parents would be waiting for us at in Mt. Pleasant, outside Charleston.

The interstates that carried me through the South may not be always pretty, but they’re efficient and fast, especially if you manage to avoid traffic at peak times through the population centers. In my case, it was the 35, 20, 85, 77 and then a short stretch of the mighty 40 that took me down from north-central Texas and across Louisiana and Mississippi, through Alabama and Georgia and a piece of South Carolina, and up to Winston-Salem.

Back to Atlanta for a minute.

A stroke of luck and a spot of late afternoon traffic coaxed me off I-84 just north of the city at the suburb of Gwinnett. That night, my last on the long road, I’d decide to splurge and stay at a La Quinta Inn. A pleasant and more comfortable diversion – for Stella, too — from the Motel 6 routine.

Where's that frosty cone?

The luck came in finding, down the road from the La Quinta at the entrance to an office-industrial park, what has be one of the largest Asian supermarket and shopping center complexes this side of L.A.

I browsed happily through the Hong Kong Market, with its large American flag hoisted out front, picked up some food items and cooking supplies for the stay in South Carolina (Asian cuisine not being one of that state’s finer points) and grabbed a hearty take-out dinner plate at the supermarket’s food court.

A young Latino clerk working the aisles, whose name tag said Oscar, told me the market was fairly new and served a substantial Asian population, largely Korean and Vietnamese. Business was good, Oscar said, and the market’s stock was growing steadily. It carried an assortment of Latino goods as well, Latinos comprising another large portion of the Atlanta-area population, according to Oscar, who seemed pleased and proud to walk the aisles with me and show me around.

After seven days away from the Bay Area, you tend to miss aspects of our cultural diversity offered by a place like the Hong Kong Supermarket and its surrounding stores and shops. So we lingered a bit, Stella and I. This was the home stretch, after all.

And lingering with me would be images and impressions from that steady march through the South:

• The casino signs, and casinos, that spring up as soon as Texas turns into Louisiana, announcing that this is a different kind of state. At a roadside food and service station complex just inside Louisiana, a high McDonald’s golden arches sign has below it, in large, red electronic letters: SOUTHERN. The miles of woods that border I-20 through Louisiana, with their tall, lean trees, bare from winder, and the swamps.
• For just a few minutes, like a wisp of smoke in the night, the station that comes over the car radio – big WSN out of Nashville, Tennessee, with DJ Eddie Stubbs – long enough to play a country swing song or two and then fades away.
• Crossing the Mississippi River – a spectacular but serene sight — over an arched, iron bridge at Vicksburg, a famed Civil War battlefield site.
• The massive metal-sided buildings with fireworks for sale and the mix of billboards for “spas” and stores offering adult merchandise, cigarette outlets, and Christian radio stations. “After the game this Sunday, let’s eat at my house,” one billboard message reads. It’s signed “God.”
• The sprawling, gleaming white Mercedes Benz plant in the low, green hills outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and an even larger, sparkling BMW plant near Spartanburg, South Carolina. “Proud to Call South Carolina Home,” a billboard says in sedate lettering.
• The huge, modern structures that house churches and fellowships, and the multi-acre lots of RV dealerships. Who’s buying them?
• The sign, at Gastonia, North Carolina, for New Hope Road.

There you go: Hope and change on (and off) the interstate.

Not far now to Winston-Salem and the end of the trail.